ABSTRACT
An interesting issue is whether measures of individual psychological health are correlated with marital competence. Several theories of marital structure emphasize the role of the spouses’ agreement regarding basic values as an important variable in facilitating the relationship. The high-low pattern of spouse psychological health was noted to be associated with all types of marital structures and the low-low pattern was only associated with marital structures of lower levels of competence. Since correlational data cannot inform regarding the direction of causality, the safest assumption is that the effects are reciprocal; individual psychological health facilitates marital competence, and marital competence facilitates individual psychological health. There is support for relationships between marital competence and socioeconomic status, agreement on terminal values, and women’s marital satisfaction. Couples with a high-low pattern of individual psychological health had relationship structures that also varied from highly competent to clearly dysfunctional. Couples with a low-low pattern of individual psychological health, however, had only dysfunctional marital structures.
